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A familiar face brought Alicia and Cary together again in the latest 'Good Wife'

With the election in the rear view mirror, "Tracks," the latest episode of The Good Wife, finds the show taking a moment to breathe and collect itself before its characters face their next hurdle. We check in with some dangling plot lines from before the holidays, but other than that, it's a pretty a low-key episode for the show.

This week sees the return of musical Rowby Canton (Matthew Lillard), which continues this season's trend of returning to some of the show's greatest hits and bolsters the feeling that we are indeed entering the show's final lap.

The last time we saw Rowby was in Season 5's "Goliath and David," when Florrick & Agos defended him and his writing partner in a suit over a song they wrote called "Thick Trick."

Rowby, an independent musician, again finds himself facing a lawsuit from a Goliath-like entity. This time, it's his former label, who is suing for $3.2 million for the ownership of an adorable kid song he wrote called "Good Morning Magic Sunshine" that has gone semi-viral. His label claims they own it because he wrote it while still under contract, but Rowby maintains that it was written after his contact expired. With nowhere else to go, he seeks out the help of the two lawyers who defended him last time, Alicia and Cary, who decide to team up on this case.

Unfortunately, "Tracks" never takes full advantage of having Alicia and Cary work together. They share very few minutes alone and the dynamic they once had never quite catches fire. Cary feels very much like a prop in this episode, like if you took him off the case with them it wouldn't change much, except that negotiations with the opposing lawyers wouldn't have occurred at Lockhart Agos & Lee.

Image: David M. Russell/CBS

Instead of focusing on Cary and Alicia's relationship, the show turns its attention to the chemistry between Lucca and Rowby. From the moment Rowby meets Lucca, he's taken with her beauty and spends most of the episode trying to get her to go out with him. Eventually, she agrees and, before they go home together, she warns him that although she likes artists, she loses interest in them very quickly. That doesn't scare Rowby off. Honestly, I don't know what to make of this. It's just kind of weird.

In court, Alicia, Lucca and Cary start off pretty strong. Their judge is very sympathetic to Rowby and rules in his favor to dismiss the lawsuit twice. However, the label's lawyer, Andrea Stevens (Christine Lahti), who keeps reminding us she adopted a child from China, argues that Rowby's song is plagiarized from an even more popular children's tune that the label owns. Upon comparing the songs, the judge rules that they are substantially similar and that Rowby did plagiarize.

Losing the case also brings an end to Lucca's brief romance with Rowby.

Meanwhile, Diane and David see an opportunity to poach back the clients that had been poached from Lockhart, Agos & Lee. Many of those clients, including Bea Wilson (Kelly Bishop) are perturbed by Florrick & Quinn's lack of infrastructure — i.e. the fact that it's run out of Alicia's apartment and that they have to deal with her testy and unpleasant downstairs neighbor.

In the end, however, the clients decide that they want Alicia and Lucca as their lawyers, but want the infrastructure of Lockhart Agos. Cary offers Alicia and Lucca an opportunity to return to the firm, but Alicia says no because she likes not answering to anyone. It's clear that Lucca is more open to considering the offer than Alicia.

The Return of Marissa Gold

With the election over, Ruth is leaving town and Eli is resuming his duties as Peter's chief of staff and taking back his office. Before she leaves, Ruth warns Eli that Peter, a returning governor coming off of a national loss, has a target on his back and needs to watch out for people (possibly friends) trying to attack him. Eli tries to approach Alicia about this, but she doesn't want to hear it.

Marissa returns tonight and quickly finds out about the tension between Alicia and Eli. Marissa begs Alicia to forgive her father and to give him a second chance, but Alicia says just she can't.

"I hurt," she tells Marissa in moving vulnerable moment. "It hurt me ... He can't expect anything more from. It would be unfair for him to expect anything more."

That moment with Marissa is particularly striking because it's the first time in the episode that it feels like Alicia is present in the moment. It's as if she's still reeling from and distracted by Eli's confession and that's creating a distance between her and everything else she's experiencing. It definitely didn't seem like she was that engaged with this week's case.

The episode ends with two of Alicia's relationships in varying states of decay. Her relationship with Lucca is clearly on the rocks given their disagreement over whether or not to accept Cary's offer, and now the tension between her and Eli is affecting how she deals with Marissa.

Case Notes:

The homeowners association is Alicia's building start eviction proceedings because she's running a business out of her apartment. Thankfully, Grace steps up and finds out that the HOA is also violating regulations of its own and uses that to stop them from evicting her mother, while doing a bit of Alicia Florrick cosplay.

I'm not sure what motivated Alicia to do this, but she also decides to fire Grace. It's partially because of Grace's disappointing grades, but there seems to be a little more to it. Maybe thinking Marissa came to her on Eli's orders makes her reconsider having her own her daughter involved in her business? I don't know.

I'm sad to see Margo Martindale leave the show. The show never quite harnessed her potential. Hopefully, she'll be back.

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